Rye Hunt took powerful psychedelic drug NBOMe before he disappeared, family believes

The sister of Australian man Rye Hunt who has been missing in Brazil since May 21, Romany Brodribb, says she now believes her brother took the powerful psychoactive drug NBOMe the night before he disappeared.

Romany told Hack that Rye took the drug believing it was MDMA.

"It's my understanding that the illicit substance marketed to them was MDMA or some form of ecstasy," she said.

"We now have a sufficient amount of evidence and are quite convinced that actually the drug they were ingesting was not the drug they were told it was.

"We now believe they were potentially using a much more hardcore hallucinogen and form of psychedelic…. called NBOMe."

"NBOMe is a class of strong hallucinogenic substances that have been newly created in the last five years," she said. "My understanding is it's coming out of China."

Dr Barratt says that NBOMe is usually taken in a similar way to LSD "under the tongue or in the cheek" but it has been previously reported that Rye and Mitchell were snorting lines, which could have led to a much higher and unintended dose.

She says NBOMe is usually taken in far lower doses than MDMA.

"The dose you take is very low, in the micrograms, unlike with MDMA which is taken in the milligrams," she said.

"It could have been mixed with other inert powders or potentially other drugs.

"Dosage would be much harder to detect in that situation."

CCTV image shows Rye Hunt leaving the airport in Rio before he disappeared.

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Nightclub owner says Rye thought everybody was going to kill him

Romany says that Rye's paranoid and psychotic behaviour the night before he disappeared was extremely out of character.

"Local Brazilians who we have spoken to and who have given us information about this particular drug, NBOMe, seem convinced that the effects that it had… on Rye, that those effects wouldn’t have been caused by ecstasy or MDMA alone," she said.

"Rye is reported as being extremely paranoid, extremely scared and frightened.

"We know that through talking to the nightclub owner of the place where he and Mitch were last partying… that Rye was so frightened, he thought that everybody in the club was potentially going to kill him or harm him. He trusted Bruno [the nightclub owner] and so he wanted to be close to Bruno.

Bruno reported that Rye was holding onto his arm and his hand and saying 'please don't leave me, I trust that you're not going to hurt me'."

The description of Rye's behaviour matches Dr Barratt's description of the potential effects of NBOMe.

"You can lose a sense of your being in the world, you can see hallucinations, things appear different to how they normally appear… for some people that can be experienced as psychosis," she said.

Romany says Rye's erratic behaviour is making it much more difficult to track his likely movements after his last sighting.

"We sort of have to think about what options he might have thought of, what he might have done next or where he might have wanted to go," she said.

"It's just really difficult to put ourselves in that headspace because that’s not the Rye that we know."

Romany says Rye took "significantly more" of the substance than his travel mate Mitchell.

"It's heartbreaking to think that my brother was in that kind of headspace and so frightened and so scared and so confused on the other side of the world by himself."

Romany hopes that other young Aussies travelling will learn from Rye's experience.

"You don't know what you're getting when you use illicit substances. In the case of my brother, one really stupid decision has had dire consequences for him potentially," she told Hack.

"I just think it was a really important message to spread that we just don't know what effect these drugs are going to have. You don't really know who to trust and you are messing with your health and your life."

Rye and his girlfriend Bonnie Cuthbert.

Rye Hunt’s girlfriend Bonnie Cuthbert has now been in Rio looking for Rye for a week.

She told Hack she has been getting up at 4:00am every day and scouring the streets, speaking to local fishermen and handing out pictures of Rye.

Locals are forthcoming with information when speaking to Bonnie and Rye's family, however they haven't necessarily passed on information to police.

"A lot of the locals over here already know about the missing Australian," Bonnie said.

"We've got some lovely expat Australians who have put their hand up to help us with translation.

"A number of them have helped us walk up and down the streets of Copacabana… if people do have information they have been able to help us translate."

While there have been reports that Rye was sighted on an island just off Copacabana and that a fisherman saw a body, Bonnie says neither of these have been officially reported to police.

"I’ve been in the police station today and they can't confirm that any of this is true because nobody has gone to the police," she said.

"We're trying to work with facts at the moment and it isn’t factual so we can’t stick with it."

Navy calls off search as police, family continue looking

Cotunduba Island where a fisherman said he saw someone matching Rye's description.

The Brazilian Navy have now called off the search for Rye’s body after looking for the customary 72 hours, but fishermen have been put on alert.

Bonnie says she is not pinning her hopes to the ocean given the sightings have not been confirmed.

"A lot of the fishermen have reassured me that if someone had swam to the island they would know about it," she said.

They said they sit there day in, day out. They said if something like that had happened it's big gossip for them… if they saw someone swimming to this island they'd all be talking about.

"So when I went with the translator the translator said to me 'these fishermen are sure that someone didn't swim here because they would have seen it'."

The family are not ruling out hiring a private investigator to assist with the search and ask that if anyone has any information at all relating to Rye they can contact them directly on findrye@gmail.com

"We really appreciate all the support we are getting," Romany told Hack.

"We just encourage people to keep sharing the message of Rye's disappearance and we keep encouraging people to report anything they may see or hear.

"If you are on forums or you see in social media that someone has commented and may have a lead please please follow that up. We just want answers. We'd like to find him and bring him home."